Hawker Beech Charging for Older-aircraft Tech Advice

Hawker Beechcraft late last week took the wraps off a new program designed to charge owners and operators of older aircraft a fee for technical support services. The new Classic Legacy Aircraft Service & Support (Class) program implements a fee-based service for more than 38,000 airplanes manufactured by Hawker Beechcraft (and Raytheon Aircraft and Beechcraft), with the exception of the Staggerwing and Beech 18, which the company no longer supports. Hawker Beechcraft said it receives more than 12,000 inquiries per month regarding support for these older aircraft. Until implementation of Class on Monday the company was providing free support, often involving looking up information already available in Hawker Beechcraft publications or researching original configurations, searching for material specifications and replacing missing manual pages “for airplanes AOG at a non-HBC-rated facility.” The Class program applies to aircraft that (with some exceptions) are at least 10 years old, a fleet that ranges from older piston airplanes to King Airs to Beechjets to early Hawker 800s and 1000s. Fees start at $125 per hour. Hawker Beechcraft also announced a new online pay-per-view system for technical publications, for which users can pay only for time spent viewing material without having to subscribe to an entire library.